If you expect guitarist Nancy Wilson of Heart to celebrate her hard-rocking band’s impending induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by dining on some haute cuisine, you’re off by a few letters. n Hat cuisine, yes. Haute cuisine, no. n That’s because — after Heart was first nominated for the Rock Hall two years ago — Wilson told U-T San Diego: “If we actually get inducted, I’ll eat my hat!”

Asked Monday if she’s been honing her hat-cooking skills in preparation for Thursday’s induction ceremony at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, she responded enthusiastically. “Yes!” said the former Camp Pendleton resident. “Roughly chopped and sautéed with a little butter, garlic and white wine.”

Her sister, Heart singer Ann, will not be partaking in the hat consumption.

“No, thanks,” said Ann, a San Diego native. “I will pass on that.”

Their differences on the possible nutritional value of hats notwithstanding, Ann, 62, and Nancy, 59, are both understandably elated.

They are also pleasantly surprised, since Heart failed to earn enough votes for induction in 2012 — and other artists nominated two years in a row have not made the cut.

“We actually thought the third time would be the charm,” Ann said from a tour stop in Phoenix.

Thursday’s induction ceremony, the first to be held in Los Angeles since 1993, will be telecast as an HBO special on May 18.

Heart will be inducted by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden. After Ann and Nancy’s acceptance speeches, they and the band they have co-led since the mid-1970s will perform with special guests, including Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready (himself a former San Diegan).

Other artists scheduled to be inducted and perform Thursday include pioneering New York hip-hop group Public Enemy, Oscar-winning composer and singer-songwriter Randy Newman, and veteran Canadian prog-rock trio Rush. Newman will be inducted by Don Henley of The Eagles and will perform with Jackson Browne and Creedence Clearwater Revival founder John Fogerty.

Rush will be inducted by Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of the band Foo Fighters. Public Enemy will be inducted by Harry Belafonte and film director Spike Lee. The graying stoner comedy duo Cheech & Chong will induct pioneering record producer and record label honcho Lou Adler.

Posthumous inductees Thursday include disco queen Donna Summer (who will be honored in song by Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Hudson) and blues guitar giant Albert King (who will be inducted by John Mayer and musically saluted by Mayer and Gary Clark Jr.)

Being in such illustrious company is a bonus for Heart. But simply being inducted, no matter when or with which other artists, is a career highlight for the Wilson sisters.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s off the charts,” said Ann, who performs here Aug. 26 with Nancy and the latest edition of Heart at the SDSU Open Air Theatre.

‘Stairway to Heaven’

But being inducted won’t be nearly as nerve-racking as the once-in-a-lifetime Dec. 2 gig Heart performed as part of the annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C.

The event in question found Heart performing Led Zeppelin’s epic “Stairway to Heaven” for a VIP audience. It included President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, along with the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin, one of the evening’s honorees.

The fabled English rock band’s sound and style was a profound inspiration for the Wilsons, whose third Top 40 hit, 1977’s “Barracuda,” featured a driving guitar riff and vocal wails that were clearly Zep-influenced.

Asked what it was like to simultaneously perform for the Obamas and Led Zeppelin, Ann replied: “The most exciting, the most nerve-racking, the most rewarding.”

In early January, Nancy was contacted by Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner. He was instrumental in making the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum a reality — it opened in 1995 in Cleveland — and is the museum’s co-founder and vice chairman. He wanted to personally inform Nancy that Heart had been voted in and would be inducted.

“I was told personally by Jann,” Nancy recalled. “And as soon as I could recover, I called Ann and told her the amazing news myself.”

The induction comes 38 years after the release of “Dreamboat Annie,” Heart’s 1975 debut album. But the artistic impetus that set Ann and Nancy on their musical path took place 11 years earlier, when they went to their grandmother Maudie’s house in La Jolla, where they watched the early 1964 debut of The Beatles on TV’s “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“As Marine Corps brats, we were mostly on the base on Camp Pendleton, not exactly San Diego,” Ann said.

But they were off the base for The Beatles’ U.S. TV christening. And what transpired was a life-changing experience for the Wilson sisters, as it was for millions of young Americans, from future Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler to aspiring actor Tom Hanks.

Nancy recounts that ﻿moment in “Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll” (HarperCollins), the Wilson sisters’ 2012 autobiography.

Fab love affair

“From the first moment we saw them on that tiny screen, they became everything to us,” she writes.

“We didn’t just fall in love with them; we fell in love with Great Britain, rock ’n’ roll, and with ourselves in a way. They were the lens through which we imagined a bigger world. … To us, The Beatles were deadly serious stuff, something we studied like scholars. We didn’t want to be Beatle girlfriends. We wanted to be Beatles.”

A few months later, just before they moved to Washington state, the Wilsons’ grandmother gave Ann $50 to buy her first guitar.

“Armed with my Beatles albums, and a Mel Bay chord booklet, I learned to play all their hits,” Ann writes in “Kicking & Dreaming.”

“My parents bought Nancy her own guitar not long after … we both played incessantly.”

Nancy joined Heart in 1974, several years after her sister.

While there had been all-women rock bands before — most notably Goldie & The Gingerbreads, Fanny and Birtha — Heart was the first rock band to achieve fame that featured two women fronting an otherwise all-male rock band. Part of the Wilson sisters’ determination to succeed, they write in their book, was a desire to make naysayers of the many cynics who told them, emphatically (and in coarse language), that women musicians couldn’t rock as hard, or as well, as male musicians.

Or, as Nancy put it in a 2011 U-T San Diego interview: “We never fit in, exactly. We’re kind of different that way, but that’s OK. That’s what’s good and unique about us.”

Other bands with female lead singers have been inducted into the rock and roll Hall of Fame, including Jefferson Airplane and The Mamas & The Papas.

But Heart is the first women-led band — let alone a hard-rock band — to achieve this honor.

The distinction is not lost on the Wilson sisters.

“When women get recognized as equals for any reason,” Ann said, “it’s always a victory.”